Last Saturday morning began like many other Saturdays for our family. We slept in a little bit late (hello 8:30am!) The rhythm of kids on the computers in the living room, coffee percolating in the kitchen and pancakes cooking on the stove is familiar to us. It brings a sense of routine. It’s from place of security that we make our Saturday list of things to do. With a whole day lying ahead of us, many activities make up that list: laundry, fixing broken appliances, grocery shopping…It’s the rhythm we come to expect on Saturday mornings.as
Yet, this past Saturday, in the midst of routine, an uncomfortable reality began to nudge at me. Our routine is made by us and can be interrupted and changed forever. At anytime. You see, as my family was finding comfort in the routine activities in our home, another family was experiencing immense pain and confusion in theirs. From my window, I watched as cars pulled into the funeral home across the street to mourn the loss of a young man. Someone who was in his routine at college last Saturday. Someone who was responsible, loved God and had a whole life ahead of him. Someone, who had enough wits to pull of f the road when the symptoms began so that his passengers would not lose their lives in an accident. Yet Sunday morning. with little warning, a torn aorta suddenly took his life. In a bittersweet twist, he had enough time to call his parents from the hospital to tell them Good-bye.
For me, I couldn’t stop thinking of that unsettling reality that faced me. My routine, my expectations can be interrupted and changed forever. It’s the unsettling reality that my rhythm that brings comfort is part of a bigger rhythm that comprises the activities of all of creation. My joy may come at the same time as someone’s sorrow. And it works vise versa. . The surreal part of it is that God’s hand intersects in both.
As Job so eloquently states” He gives. He takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord”. (Job 1:21)
I find it easy to praise God in the comfortable rhythms of my life. The challenge is to Praise god when the rhythm is interrupted and changed. And it will happen; at anytime.
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